It’s a very big game, and we feel people will really see how how vast and complete that game is. It’s a really full, triple… quadruple-A game, that will deliver in the long run.

-Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, justifying Skull and Bones’ $70 price point

What to say about Skull and Bones?

I wasn’t even going to do this as a quote of the day.  This quote was back at the beginning of the month, Skull and Bones feels like it is mainly a console title, and while I kept seeing it advertised on Twitter (that UbiSoft gives Elon money is another issue), it was never going to be something I would play.

To start with, it is a UbiSoft title and they have been on my blacklist for a couple of decades now for simply being complete shits.  I will buy EA titles, but screw UbiSoft and there customer hating policies.  Never is a long time, but I am willing to give it a shot in their case.

Skull and Bones – An original something

Furthermore, we all know, back in the logical parts of our brains, that AAA game prices (there are no AAAA games, knock that shit off before it infects the damn industry) being stuck at $60 for 20 years was not tenable in the real world where the price of nearly everything else has consistantly gone up.  So charging $70 isn’t a sin in my book, because if they don’t do that, then it will just be DLC and a cash shop and season passes… wait, they’ll do that even if they do raise the price.  That ship has sailed.  Nevermind I guess.

But the whole thing came up as part of the price discussion when an investor rep asked why the game couldn’t have been free to play and just loaded on more of the extras, since free will generally draw a bigger audience.  Anybody with some history knows how much UbiSoft hates the idea of anybody getting anything for free.  My early hate was fed by their draconian copy protection measures, which literally punished people who paid and encouraged pirating.

Finally, Yves Guillemot saying something dumb and annoying is barely news.  He is the arrogant face of a company that consistantly tries to prove it sees its customers as the enemy, or such is my extremely biased view.  I will repeat, every time I mention UbiSoft, that I hold a grudge.

But then I though about my new year’s prediction about UbiSoft finding some way to piss me off in 2024 and I asked myself, “Did this quote make me say ‘Fuck that guy!’ when I saw it?”

And yes, yes it did in fact make me say “Fuck that guy!” when I saw it.  It wasn’t a full throated utterance, but it rose to the point of muttered vocalization, and I am going to say that counts.  So I figured I had best document that quote so I can find it come December when I score my predictions.

Then, as icing on the cake as I wrote this I went to go check the review scores on MetaCritic, just to see how the alleged AAAA game was faring.  It is hard to tell.  I mean, on most days, when the review score range is locked in at 75-100 because gaming sites want ad revenue from the big names, seeing a score of 60 would be a pretty hard blow.

The PS5 has the most reviews, so I chose that

60 is better than 40 or 20, but it also smacks of “how low can we go before Yves bans our site from ads forever more?”  I am not completely unsympathetic to that reasoning.  Game sites gotta survive too.

Then again, maybe this is the new quadruple A grading scale?  Maybe a 60 is good?

Certainly the user reviews made reference to the AAAA quote from the CEO.

Skull and Bones apparently took a decade to make, costs somewhere in the region of $200 million over that time, and there was Yves painting a big target on its back, giving people an excuse to shit all over it and the price because it is also a full on live service cash grab.

Never change UbiSoft, never change.

Also, 10 points for Hufflepuff!

It’s a very big game, and we feel people will really see how how vast and complete that game is. It’s a really full, triple… quadruple-A game, that will deliver in the long run.

-Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, justifying Skull and Bones’ $70 price point

What to say about Skull and Bones?

I wasn’t even going to do this as a quote of the day.  This quote was back at the beginning of the month, Skull and Bones feels like it is mainly a console title, and while I kept seeing it advertised on Twitter (that UbiSoft gives Elon money is another issue), it was never going to be something I would play.

To start with, it is a UbiSoft title and they have been on my blacklist for a couple of decades now for simply being complete shits.  I will buy EA titles, but screw UbiSoft and there customer hating policies.  Never is a long time, but I am willing to give it a shot in their case.

Skull and Bones – An original something

Furthermore, we all know, back in the logical parts of our brains, that AAA game prices (there are no AAAA games, knock that shit off before it infects the damn industry) being stuck at $60 for 20 years was not tenable in the real world where the price of nearly everything else has consistantly gone up.  So charging $70 isn’t a sin in my book, because if they don’t do that, then it will just be DLC and a cash shop and season passes… wait, they’ll do that even if they do raise the price.  That ship has sailed.  Nevermind I guess.

But the whole thing came up as part of the price discussion when an investor rep asked why the game couldn’t have been free to play and just loaded on more of the extras, since free will generally draw a bigger audience.  Anybody with some history knows how much UbiSoft hates the idea of anybody getting anything for free.  My early hate was fed by their draconian copy protection measures, which literally punished people who paid and encouraged pirating.

Finally, Yves Guillemot saying something dumb and annoying is barely news.  He is the arrogant face of a company that consistantly tries to prove it sees its customers as the enemy, or such is my extremely biased view.  I will repeat, every time I mention UbiSoft, that I hold a grudge.

But then I though about my new year’s prediction about UbiSoft finding some way to piss me off in 2024 and I asked myself, “Did this quote make me say ‘Fuck that guy!’ when I saw it?”

And yes, yes it did in fact make me say “Fuck that guy!” when I saw it.  It wasn’t a full throated utterance, but it rose to the point of muttered vocalization, and I am going to say that counts.  So I figured I had best document that quote so I can find it come December when I score my predictions.

Then, as icing on the cake as I wrote this I went to go check the review scores on MetaCritic, just to see how the alleged AAAA game was faring.  It is hard to tell.  I mean, on most days, when the review score range is locked in at 75-100 because gaming sites want ad revenue from the big names, seeing a score of 60 would be a pretty hard blow.

The PS5 has the most reviews, so I chose that

60 is better than 40 or 20, but it also smacks of “how low can we go before Yves bans our site from ads forever more?”  I am not completely unsympathetic to that reasoning.  Game sites gotta survive too.

Then again, maybe this is the new quadruple A grading scale?  Maybe a 60 is good?

Certainly the user reviews made reference to the AAAA quote from the CEO.

Skull and Bones apparently took a decade to make, costs somewhere in the region of $200 million over that time, and there was Yves painting a big target on its back, giving people an excuse to shit all over it and the price because it is also a full on live service cash grab.

Never change UbiSoft, never change.

Also, 10 points for Hufflepuff!